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I certainly don’t have anything against giving to charity, but the Salvation Army knows damn well what it’s doing. First, they position a red bucket about a foot outside the grocery store by my house — so close that you have to deliberately walk around it like an A-hole to get in or out of the store — and second, there’s a different person ringing the bell each day so the whole "I gave you something yesterday" excuse goes right out the window. So now it basically costs me whatever spare change is in my pocket to go to the grocery store now.

The last bastion of hope is the old "I don’t have any cash on me" line. Well, that’s fading fast for people in Dallas as the Star Telegram reports that the Salvation Army "will offer credit-card machines at about a dozen of its nearly 500 Metroplex locations for the first time this holiday season." It gets better, too, as the minimum credit card donation is $5 since the charity gets charged 25 cents, plus 2.9% of each transaction. Tossing your spare change in that bucket doesn’t seem so bad after all, huh?